


Watching

by hardboiledbaby



Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-20
Updated: 2010-11-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 07:16:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardboiledbaby/pseuds/hardboiledbaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris watches Buck watch him. And vice versa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watching

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Romankate](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Romankate).



Chris watches.

It is in his nature to be watchful, vigilant. To be observant of who comes and goes, who pauses too long or leaves too quickly.

He watches, and waits.

Buck watches too, although his watchfulness is different. Less intense perhaps, more open and casual-like, but watchful just the same.

He watches Chris, and waits.

Chris knows he is being watched. He feels the weight of the gaze on him, as real and sure as he would feel a hand resting on his shoulder—Buck's hand, strong and reassuring. Buck's gaze.

Chris watches Buck watch him.

Buck looks at Chris as he always has: with eyes that know the pain and share the loss. There is so much of _them_ in those eyes, the good memories and the bad ones, the laughter and the tears, life and death. But now... now there is something more in those eyes.

Buck watches Chris watch him.

Underneath the tough and impassive exterior, there is vulnerability in Chris, desperation, a need so wide and so deep it threatens to swallow him whole. He tries to hide it, but if you know where to look, it is not hard to find.

Buck knows where to look.

After all, they know each other of old, these two, their lives intertwining more often than not. They have traveled together through long years and weary miles. In easy companionship, mostly—but not always, for they both are headstrong, prideful, and stubborn. Clashes are as inevitable as they are unrelenting, battles of words and of fists that draw blood and leave scars. It is a struggle they accept as their lot in this life, a part of who and what they are—damaged, fragmented. Broken men. A harsh lot, perhaps, but one they share and understand. So Buck knows.

Buck shows Chris what he sees. And now Chris sees it too.

No one would have suspected that the trail would lead them to this, to a place where they would be made whole again, where the fragments of two souls would become one—certainly not Chris. And yet, here they are. Right or wrong, it is a place from which he never wants to leave.

Of course, they are still stubborn and proud. They still clash. But now their battles are tempered with a willingness to bend, because there is no defeat when one yields to the heart. Such a simple thing, a simple truth. Yet, it is the simple truths that are the hardest to see. Sometimes it takes a strike of lightning to show it to you, and only in that moment's clarity do you realize that it's been there all along.

Every now and again, doubt seeps into his sense of wonder and Chris falters. At those times, he is sure all this is nothing more than a dream: smoke on a breeze, heat shimmers on the horizon. But then he looks at Buck, looks into his eyes. In that instant, he is reassured. The uncertainty is banished, gone as though it had never been.

Because now Chris sees what Buck sees.

Now Chris sees the love.


End file.
